Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Getting feedback is a great way to see the flaws in your writing you were blind to before. However GIVING feedback is an even better way of seeing them!

Of course, in order for your feedback to help you—and the person you’re giving it to—you need to identify what is good, helpful feedback and what is detrimental. Good feedback identifies the problem, and it does so in a tone that is honest, practical and understanding. There is no point saying a scene or character is ‘bad’ without identifying WHY.

The next important step is identifying a solution to the problem. Sometimes, it’s really difficult to identify how to fix a problem—and often the fixes are matters of opinion. EG: if a character is very boring and unlikeable, one solution might be to make him nicer. However, the writer may decide to make him meaner and more charming, with much greater success.

The reason giving feedback is more important that receiving it is that it is hard to objectively analyse your own work. However when you are looking at the work of someone else, you can see the flaws you would be blind to in your own writing. Being able to identify flaws in the writing of others is a great step to being able to identify it in your own work—and avoid the same mistake in the future.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Most writers will, at some point, use a critique group, either online or in person. Some are, admittedly, better or more productive than others. Finding the right critique group for you is a personal choice and different groups will fit different writers.

You should aim to find a group that is both friendly and productive--reliability is a good thing too. Find people who meet at the same place, at the same time, or chasing them around will become a nightmare. This is less of an issue online.

I highly recommend critique groups and have been a member of some truly fantastic ones. I've written this tutorial to give writers some tips to make the best of them.

Stop wasting everyone's time:

If you do not edit to the best of your ability before sharing, you are wasting everyone's time.

When someone gives feedback, they are going to focus on the errors that are most obvious to them and work down their mental list until they run out of things to say and/or they run out of time. Most of the time, that will mean you only hear about the top two or three problems from readers.

That does not mean those are the only problems there are, just that they are the biggest.

Every traditionally published author has an editor. I doubt any author, regardless of how famous or wonderful, had a book go to print without at least one round of edits. If there has, I bet that novel was weaker for it.

So if there are errors you know are there, fix them before sharing the work! If you know about all the problems readers discuss, you got nothing and they wasted their time.

There ARE things in your writing that need fixing that you can't see. So make sure that's what readers are addressing.

Listening between the words:

Sometimes readers make crazy, useless suggestions. The kind that make you roll your eyes and wonder what novel they were reading, because it sure as hell wasn't yours. However these suggestions are always gold and you should always make note of them.

Am I suggesting you use their completely mental ideas? Of course not. But however misguided, they're usually highlighting a critical problem. I had a reader suggest that my main character torture a secondary character for information. Not only would this have been completely out of character, but it would have made my main character completely unlikeable.

However the message was blazingly clear: the scene needed more tension between the characters.

People can't always put into words what is wrong with the scene, however if you can recognise the intent behind their feedback, you will get the answers you need. You have to be willing to REALLY listen and not just hear them, but understand what they are trying (and sometimes failing) to say.

Stupid suggestions are not stupid. They're just badly worded. Look for the weakness the reader is trying to 'fix'.

"No one has anything useful to say!":

Occasionally I hear writers bash their critique groups. 'The people there are idiots, they can't find their asses with both hands and they certainly don't knowgood literature'.

It is possible to have a bad critique group. I have been to some that are either 1) mean--no actual critique is given, writers are just bullied and mocked or 2) butterflies and kittens--no actual critique is given, writers are just praised and congratulated.

Surprisingly, the latter has the worst writers.

However, most of the time, if you say a critique group is terrible, you're the problem. No them. You have failed to listen and interpret correctly, or failed to ask the right questions. It doesn't matter HOW bad someone is at writing, as long as they are capable of reading, they can give you fantastic feedback. The most important thing you can get from readers is how they interpret the information and how interested they are in the story. If they didn't get it they didn't 'read it wrong'. You 'wrote it wrong'!

It's highly unlikely your group are jealous of your brilliant writing. If they're giving you a lot of suggestions, your writing probably needs a lot of work. In my experience, the more a comment hurts, the more true it is.

Writers who cannot handle or use constructive criticism are unlikely to ever be published traditionally and they are the ones making such an ugly mess of self pub.

When not to share:

Sometimes it is the wrong time to share your writing. If you are very early in a project some critical feedback can completely derail the writing process. I always, without fail, recommend you write a complete first draft before you share ANY material.

That may mean huge re-writes in the future that you could have been spared if someone else had looked over the work, but compared to banging out that first draft, re-writes are easy.

Some work may be very personal to you too. Personal work, critiqued, can hurt. A lot. If you have written a story about the death of your mother, any critique is going to feel like a criticism of you and is going to be intertwined with the trauma of the experience you are writing about.

If you would like to share something personal, don't be shy to say: "I don't want feedback, I just need to read this out."

Share and get critique when you are ready. There is no good reason to rush.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

You shouldn’t ever pay someone to edit your writing if you plan to publish traditionally. It’s very bad business sense and its going to cause you a lot of distress in the future.

Money should flow TO the writer. You don’t give agents money, you don’t give publishers money—people give you money. This includes paying someone to polish your manuscript before sending it to publishers and agents. You need to know how to do those things yourself.

‘Why?’ Some of you are asking. ‘Publishers and agents do that for you!’. That’s half true—they do, a little bit. But they only want to fix rare, minor problems—the kind of problems you get from a typo, NOT from a complete misunderstanding of how to use a comma correctly.

If you get an agent or publisher, they are going to expect you to produce reasonably polished manuscripts over and over. You can’t keep paying people to do it—not without being a moron anyway—and they’re going to be pretty unimpressed if you keep sending them error riddled drafts.

Its’ easier to learn it now, and do it properly from the start. And it’s good business sense.

Self publishing may be slightly different. So many self published books with potential are ruined because of terrible spelling and grammar. If you are self publishing, you should learn how to edit properly. You should edit to the degree that you expect there will be no more editing before submission, then, if you can, you may pay a professional to go over it one more time in case you missed any small things.

If they have to do lots of hours of work, it will cost you much more. Do the hard work yourself and have someone else polish. Don't treat it like something you can get by without.

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About Me

Born in 1985, Talitha is a geeky Australian writer who spends an unhealthy amount of time reading and watching horror movies. She also loves fresh water shrimps and snakes, and lives in a house dominated by various tanks housing both. She advises that shrimps are the best companions for writers; as they always look like they are typing. Snakes, on the other hand, simply knock everything off your desk—including keyboards, mugs, entire computers and shrimp tanks.
Talitha’s other interests include entomology, rock climbing, reading, web design, photography and video gaming.